The Lonely Clinton Campaign

The Democratic Presidential candidates greet each other and the newscaster Brian Williams after the first primary debate of the 2008 campaign.

PHOTOGRAPH BY STAN HONDA/AFP/GETTY

Nearly eight years ago, Democrats held their first televised Presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, marking the debut of a cast of characters that ranged from the plausible to the preposterous. For two hours, the candidates, some of them now remembered only by those with an unhealthy attachment to politics, went at it as the moderator, NBC’s Brian Williams, made game attempts to nudge them into saying something interesting. The most incautious remarks came from former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel and former Representative Dennis Kucinich, both of whom had nothing to lose and knew it. When Williams asked for reactions to Senator Harry Reid’s remark that “the war in Iraq is lost," Gravel replied, “Well, first off, understand that this war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis.” Kucinich talked about impeaching Dick Cheney. The leading competitors were simply careful. Senator Joe Biden said, “Look, Brian, this is not a game show. You know, this is not a football game. This is not win or lose. The fact of the matter is that the President has a fundamentally flawed policy.” Senator Hillary Clinton said, “Well, Brian, at the outset let me say that the American people have spoken; the Congress has voted, as of today, to end this war. And now we can only hope that the President will listen. … This is not America's war to win or lose. We have given the Iraqi people the chance to have freedom, to have their own country.” Senator Barack Obama said, “Well, Brian, I am proud that I opposed this war from the start, because I thought that it would lead to the some—the disastrous conditions that we've seen on the ground in Iraq.”

The other debate participants included the former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, the former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, and the former senator and Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards. They have faded from the scene, in Edwards’s case not in a good way. Yet most of the topics—gay marriage, climate change, immigration reform, and Iraq—are still with us. Hillary Clinton is still being asked to defend her 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq-war resolution, and still sounds much as she did when she said, “Well, Brian, I take responsibility for my vote. … It was a sincere vote based on the information available to me. And I've said many times that if I knew then what I now know, I would not have voted that way.” At the same time, Clinton brought real conviction and knowledge to discussions of universal health care, a central issue in 2008 that is still with us. Those Democrats acted like a party engaged by issues and eager to win back the White House.

That’s how the Republicans are behaving this year—eager. The candidacy of Ted Cruz, possible encores by Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum, the emergence of Rand Paul, and a “center” represented by Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, and even Lindsey Graham may induce Romney nostalgia for horror-struck Democrats. But it’s a race that’s bound to become ever more compelling, possibly with more candidates (Ben Carson? Carly Fiorina?), and the contenders will be sharpened in the process. They’re looking for a contender, just as the Democrats were eight years ago, when debates and primaries altered early perceptions that Clinton, or possibly Edwards, was bound to win.

Democrats, meanwhile, seem ready to cede the whole thing to Clinton, who, for all her experience and intelligence, may be a less-than-ideal candidate. Even her e-mail problems, which polls at first suggested could be shrugged off, aren’t going away. It didn’t help when her lawyer, David Kendall, in response to a subpoena from a congressional committee looking into the 2012 attack on the American Embassy in Benghazi, told the Times, “There are no hdr22@clintonemail.com emails from Secretary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State on the server for any review, even if such review were appropriate or legally authorized.” That her personal e-mail server has been wiped clean of any records from her years at the State Department erases the chance of anyone ever making an independent study of their contents and is bound to encourage the suspicion that there was something worth hiding. The investigation community is like a perpetual scandal-seeking machine, quick to seize on any hint of inconsistency, and both Clintons, understandably, are weary of being pursued by those who don’t wish them well. But the public may be getting weary of seeing the words “Clinton” and “lawyers” juxtaposed yet again with any sort of frequency, which could explain her slippage in the polls in three battleground states.

Not long ago, Ryan Lizza wrote about Clinton’s aura of inevitability and the historic failure of most challenges to strong front-runners. At this point, though, any insurgencies are more notional than real. Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor, has been gently critical of her as he shyly contemplates getting into the race. The former Virginia Senator James Webb, who began exploring a run last November, is still hinting that he intends to run. But when you look for signs of the Webb campaign, which promised a fresh view of income inequality, military commitments abroad, and the terrible waste of lives—mainly black lives—caused by mass incarceration, what you’re likely to find is the status of the James Webb space telescope, which will replace the Hubble. (That Webb ran NASA in the years of the Apollo program.) Clinton, meanwhile, has not exactly announced her intentions, but her campaign, without coyness, has reportedly leased two floors of office space in Brooklyn Heights, and that, as Politico notes, may be regarded by the Federal Election Commission as the beginning of a campaign.

Four years ago, Democrats were amused by the Republicans battling through the primaries, and by debates that even Republicans considered a “clown show.” This year, Republicans may be cheered by the absence of battle on the other side, by the sight of a major political party diminished by timidity and the uncertain candidacy of a single contender.

Jeffrey Frank, a senior editor at The New Yorker from 1995 to 2009, is a regular contributor to newyorker.com.

At this point in the 2016 campaign, foreign policy has not yet supplanted such topics as immigration reform and the Affordable Care Act.

As the years passed, Tom grew more entrenched in his homelessness. He was absorbed in lofty fantasies and private missions, aware of the basest necessities and the most transcendent abstractions, and almost nothing in between.